Semi Rant

It just amazes me the amount of work it takes to keep a computer virus, adware, and spyware free. The question remains, why is it so easy for all of that crap to get there in the first place?

Even with my 8+ programs to keep all of this stuff out of my computer, it still finds its way in there. I think that after spending a lot of money on a computer complete with the obiquitous operating environment I shouldn't have to worry about this stuff.

I have spent many hours reading help forums to combat all of the stuff that someone can pick up and consider myself moderately skilled at doing this, but what about those who aren't? They hook it all up and hop on the internet and a few weeks later the new computer is lagging and running like crap.

Like my Dad for instance, he goes to maybe 4 or 5 sites a day, thats it. Gets email from maybe 8 friends and family members. His computer is less than a year old. It was on its last leg when I went and fiddled with it and got it back to speed.

OK I'm done! I found this earlier and got a chuckle out of it:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.

2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, restart and drive on.

3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this too.

4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.

5. Amiga would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

6. Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.

7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.

8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.

9. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft gas and all auto fluids but the packaging would be superb.

10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

11. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

13. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.

14. There would be an "Engine Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.

15. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes. Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.

16. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own any roads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free, including IBM!

17. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11), then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive much faster, and on more roads!

18. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it.

19. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganise the ignition for a few days before it worked.

20. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.